Installing a ZX Spectrum emulator on a Raspberry Pi in 3 easy steps

This year has been the anniversary of many classic computers including my personal favourite the ZX Spectrum. While I do have my original Spectrum you can’t beat the convenience of an emulator and what better device to use than the Raspberry Pi.

Earlier this year I wrote a post about how to get the Fuse Spectrum emulator working on the Pi and while the steps still work there is now a much simpler way to get it going. The latest Debian build for the Raspberry Pi (Raspbian) is built on the Wheezy distribution which includes the Fuse emulator and other packages needed so to get it working all you need is to install the Fuse package, Spectrum ROMS and some games.

So here are the steps I used to get it working using the latest version of Raspbian

Boot up the Pi and from a command prompt:

sudo apt-get update

This makes sure your Pi is up to date

sudo apt-get install fuse-emulator-gtk

This downloads the emulator and the packages it needs (like LibSpectrum8), once this is done the Fuse emulator is installed but you will need the original Sinclair ROMs to get going which are available as a package.

sudo apt-get install spectrum-roms

This will download the Spectrum ROMs you need, you can then fire up the emulator from the desktop (under the games section). To play some games head over to worldofspectrum.org and download the games in TZX format (a Spectrum virtual tape format) and away you go.

So that’s it, a simple and quick way to get a ZX Spectrum emulator working on your Raspberry Pi, now go and play Skool Daze!

About the author Ian Dixon:Ian Dixon is a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional), founder of TheDigitalLifestyle.com tech site and producer of the weekly The Digital Lifestyle Show podcast. Ian has been writing and talking about Windows for over 10 years and has over 20 years in IT as an IT Manager. Ian has thousands of followers on Twitter and Facebook and over 4 million views on his YouTube channel.